Among the bishops who gave their answers at the last
session to the question whether their subscription to the canons was
voluntary or forced was Eusebius, bishop of Dorylæum, an Asiatic
bishop who said that he had read the Constantinopolitan canon to
“the holy pope of Rome in presence of clerics of Constantinople,
and that he had accepted it” (L. and C., Conc., iv.
815). But quite possibly this evidence is of little value.
But what is more to the point is that the Papal legates most probably
had already at this very council recognized the right of Constantinople
to rank immediately after Rome. For at the very first session
when the Acts of the Latrocinium were read, it was found that to
Flavian, the Archbishop of Constantinople, was given only the fifth
place. Against this the bishop protested and asked, “Why
289did not Flavian receive his
position?” and the papal legate Paschasinus answered:
“We will, please God, recognize the present bishop Anatolius of
Constantinople as the first [i.e. after us], but Dioscorus made Flavian
the fifth.” It would seem to be in vain to attempt to
escape the force of these words by comparing with them the statement
made in the last session, in a moment of heat and indignation, by
Lucentius the papal legate, that the canons of Constantinople were not
found among those of the Roman Code. It may well be that this
statement was true, and yet it does not in any way lessen the
importance of the fact that at the first session (a very different
thing from the sixteenth) Paschasinus had admitted that Constantinople
enjoyed the second place. It would seem that Quesnel has proved
his point, notwithstanding the attempts of the Ballerini to counteract
and overthrow his arguments.

It would be the height of absurdity for any one to
attempt to deny that the canon of Constantinople was entirely in force
and practical execution, as far of those most interested were
concerned, long before the meeting of the council of Chalcedon, and in
394, only thirteen years after the adoption of the canon, we find the
bishop of Constantinople presiding at a synod at which both the bishop
of Alexandria and the bishop of Antioch were present.

St. Leo made, in connexion with this matter, some
statements which perhaps need not be commented upon, but should
certainly not be forgotten. In his epistle to Anatolius (no.
cvi.) in speaking of the third canon of Constantinople he says:
“That document of certain bishops has never been brought by your
predecessors to the knowledge of the Apostolic See.” And in
writing to the Empress (Ep. cv., ad Pulch.) he makes the
following statement, strangely contrary to what she at least knew to be
the fact, “To this concession a long course of years has given no
effect!”

We need not stop to consider the question why Leo
rejected the xxviijth canon of Chalcedon. It is
certain that he rejected it and those who wish to see the motive of
this rejection considered at length are referred to Quesnel and to the
Ballerini; the former affirming that it was because of its
encroachments upon the prerogatives of his own see, the latter urging
that it was only out of his zeal for the keeping in full force of the
Nicene decree.

Leo can never be charged with weakness. His
rejection of the canon was absolute and unequivocal. In writing
to the Emperor he says that Anatolius only got the See of
Constantinople by his consent, that he should behave himself modestly,
and that there is no way he can make of Constantinople “an
Apostolic See,” and adds that “only from love of peace and
for the restoration of the unity of the faith” he has
“abstained from annulling this ordination” (Ep.
civ.).

To the Empress he wrote with still greater
violence: “As for the resolution of the bishops which is
contrary to the Nicene decree, in union with your faithful piety, I
declare it to be invalid and annul it by the authority of the holy
Apostle Peter” (Ep. cv.).

The papal annulling does not appear to have been of much
force, for Leo himself confesses, in a letter written about a year
later to the Empress Pulcheria (Ep. cxvi.), that the Illyrian
bishops had since the council subscribed the xxviiith
canon.

The pope had taken occasion in his letter in which he
announced his acceptance of the doctrinal decrees of Chalcedon to go on
further and express his rejection of the canons. This part of the
letter was left unread throughout the Greek empire, and Leo complains
of it to Julian of Cos (Ep. cxxvij.).

Leo never gave over his opposition, although the breach
was made up between him and Anatolius by an apparently insincere letter
on the part of the latter (Ep. cxxxii.). Leo’s
successors followed his example in rejecting the canons, both the IIId
of Constantinople and the XXVIIIth
of Chalcedon, but as M. l’abbé Duchesne so admirably
says: “Mais leur voix fut peu écoutée; on leur
accorda sans doute des satisfactions, mais de pure
cérémonie.”296296 Duchesne, Origines du Culte Chrétien, p. 24. But
290Justinian acknowledged the
Constantinopolitan and Chalcedonian rank of Constantinople in his
CXXXIst Novel. (cap. j.), and the Synod in Trullo in canon
xxxvj. renewed exactly canon xxviij. of Chalcedon. Moreover the
Seventh Ecumenical with the approval of the Papal Legates gave a
general sanction to all the canons accepted by the Trullan Synod.
And finally in 1215 the Fourth Council of the Lateran in its Vth Canon
acknowledged Constantinople’s rank as immediately after Rome, but
this was while Constantinople was in the hands of the Latins!
Subsequently at Florence the second rank, in accordance with the canons
of I. Constantinople and of Chalcedon (which had been annulled by Leo)
was given to the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, and so the
opposition of Rome gave way after seven centuries and a half, and the
Nicene Canon which Leo declared to be “inspired by the Holy
Ghost” and “valid to the end of time” (Ep.
cvi.), was set at nought by Leo’s successor in the Apostolic
See.

From the Acts of the same Holy Synod concerning Photius,
Bishop of Tyre, and Eustathius, Bishop of Berytus.

The most magnificent and glorious judges said:

What is determined by the Holy Synod [in the matter of
the Bishops ordained by the most religious Bishop Photius, but removed
by the most religious Bishop Eustathius and ordered to be Presbyters
after (having held) the Episcopate]?

The most religious Bishops Paschasinus and Lucentius,
and the Priest Boniface, representatives of the Church297297 “Apostolic
Chair of Rome” in the Greek of the acts. of Rome, said: